The Whiteboard Overexplaining meme (also known as the Guy Writing On Whiteboard meme, or Whiteboard Guy meme) takes a still or GIF from Spanish sports broadcaster Ibai Llanos’ YouTube video “The video you need to pass a selection or any important exam,” and humorously pairs it with a caption to convey the over-explaining of a usually inane topic.
Meme basics
- Meme Creator: Ibai Llanos (original video) Nikkorras (meme)
- Meme Type: Classic impact font meme, humor
- First Appearance: Youtube (original video) Reddit (meme)
- Origin Source: Youtube
- Used to Convey: Over-explaining, ridiculousness
- Peak Popularity: August 2021
Who is Ibai Llanos and what is the Whiteboard Overexplaining meme?
The Whiteboard Overexplaining meme’s visuals are stills taken from one of two (extremely similar) YouTube videos by Spanish sports commentator Ibai Llanos, paired with humorous text.
Ibai Llanos, often called just Ibai, is a Spanish streamer and esports commentator. He has over 10.6 million Instagram followers and 12.3 million YouTube subscribers at the time of writing.
The meme author often takes imagery from the opening of the video (no whiteboard) or later in the video (where Llanos has scribbled all over the whiteboard), or as a GIF of fast motion video, pairing it with a ridiculous statement showing that something is being overexplained.
What does the Whiteboard Overexplaining meme mean?
The Whiteboard Overexplaining meme is used to convey that someone is going above and beyond to try and explain something—often something ridiculous, ironic, or fairly obvious. The meme’s visuals outline the mental gymnastics and investment one might invest to explain the meme’s caption, not unlike the Charlie Day Pepe Silvia meme.
Origins and spread
In 2019, Spanish sports commentator and Youtuber Ibai Llanos uploaded a video with a title that roughly translates to “The video you need to pass a selection or any important exam.”
In the almost two-minute video, Llanos draws enthusiastically on a whiteboard, explaining to the viewer how he will “save their exams.” The video goes on to explain, in a very “sports commentator” type of way, how you—as the exam taker—need to have a positive outlook on yourself and the exam.
The video then dives into the tactical measures one must take to set themselves up for success (sitting on the corners of the exam room, using the most of one’s time). As the video progresses, Llanos gets more and more enthusiastic about what he’s saying, culminating in him screaming “Believe in yourself for f*ck’s sake! Believe in yourself! Go go go!” at the end of the video.
There are two versions of this video, almost identical in tone and content. One is entirely in Spanish (the black shirt version) and a later one has English subtitles (the white button-down version). As of now, these YouTube videos have over 30 million views combined and are thought of as one singular video for the purposes of the meme.
Llano’s video circulated within Spanish audiences in 2019 and 2020, eventually making its way onto Reddit via Spanish users. The first/earliest English meme of the clip came from Redditor Nikkorras in the /dankmemes subreddit in 2020, where he took a still of Llanos from the beginning of the YouTube video and added the text, “me explaining to my mom why I’m missing a kidney and there’s a PS5 in the living room.” The post itself is captioned “She doesn’t understand : (.”
From there, the meme took off on X and eventually, TikTok. While English versions of the meme are quite popular, Spanish memes and GIFs on both platforms continue to outperform English memes, likely because of Llano’s continued celebrity among Spanish-speaking countries.
Cultural context
Along with underlining the popularity and draw of Spanish and Spanish-speaking cultural figures, the prevalence of this meme reminds us that many institutions around us do a lot of over-explaining…and hey, maybe we should look into that?
Meme examples
@_hi77_7 #3yearold #memes #whiteboardguy #fy #fypageシ #foryoupage #fyp #foryou #fypage ♬ POU TATATA – KUBITOKKJ
@dominoxrh Fitness gram #meme #fyp #whitwboardguy #explaning #viral ♬ original sound – FitnessGram™ Pacer Test
Related memes:
- The Bro Explaining meme is here to make you uncomfortable
- The origins of the ‘John Silver Explaining Anna Jay’ meme
- Meme History: Pepe Silvia
- ‘Me Explaining’ meme shows what moms put up with from their kids
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
